While Song Mingzhen was submerged within the flow of memories, Ning Feiyun paced up and down across the cavern’s floor.

He was restless and anxious, gripping the retracted Shuangci spear tightly in his hand as he watched Yang Anxiang’s movements closely, prepared to release it at a moment’s notice. She wasn’t the only thing that had him feeling anxious and unsettled, though.

The way that Song Mingzhen had thrown his own words back at him had left him rattled.

If the truth really is such a dangerous, terrible thing, then we will face it when it reveals itself.

He had said those words to Song Mingzhen while his own suspicions were running high, and yet the situation was different— for while his companion had lost his memories, Ning Feiyun himself knew all too well what had happened in those days leading up to the attack on Baidong Mountain. If their suspicions were wrong, and somehow the real Song Mingzhen discovered the role Ning Feiyun had played, what would happen to him then?

Ning Feiyun had desperately wished to forget all of it— to forget seeing Mo Yuan throw himself into the spirit caves’ bottomless pit, to forget seeing the bloodied, battered corpse of Mo Lan lying on the floor of one of the mountain prison’s cells when he went to inspect the damage.

Later on, he’d also tried to forget how he had been the one to let Mo Yuan through the barrier to begin with.

Had he refused to help Mo Yuan back then, would the stronghold still have been breached? Would the war have still been fought?

Would so many who had died still be alive today?

Ning Feiyun couldn’t say— he only knew that everything had gone wrong after gave Mo Yuan entry into Baidong Mountain.

To this day, he had no idea how Mo Yuan survived the fall, but one thing was certain— the one whose heavenly tribulation had broken through the barrier had to have been Mo Yuan. After that day, he had emerged as the first Jiedan stage rogue cultivator in hundreds of years, known then as the Great General of the Nameless, Yinmeng Xuelian, and bathed the cultivation world in blood.

In a way… it was Ning Feiyun himself who was responsible for the war.

Such had been the burden he carried for these past seven years, knowing that it was his own treason that permitted such a thing— and yet he had an even darker secret still.

That there was still a small part of him that was infinitely glad that Mo Yuan had survived the fall.

And there was another part of him that, despite everything, had grieved while the rest of the world celebrated his destruction at the end of the war.

Ning Feiyun had been fond of Mo Yuan— truly fond of him, all those years ago when they were just children. Mo Yuan had remembered that fondness, and used it to his own benefit, and Ning Feiyun had fallen for it completely.

But at the same time, was it truly meant as a deception?

Had Mo Lan not died… would all of those later events still have come to pass?

In the end, it was a useless question to ask. The past could not be rewritten, after all. Mo Lan had died, and the dead could not be brought back to life— and neither could Mo Yuan be prevented from becoming Yinmeng Xuelian.

Still, when Song Mingzhen had turned Ning Feiyun’s own words of reassurance against him, when he’d seen that little twitch of the other’s lips despite the apprehension and anxiety he was feeling, Ning Feiyun had felt absolutely certain of one thing— that this “Song Mingzhen” was, in fact, none other than Mo Yuan himself. How this had happened, and how no one— not even Song Mingzhen’s own clan— seemed to have noticed this, he had no idea. He couldn’t recall ever thinking that the two had looked particularly alike, but when he tried to think back to when he had seen them before, his head began to ache, and he couldn’t quite envision either of their faces— whether he thought of Song Mingzhen, or of Mo Yuan, the face that came to mind was invariably the face of the man that now sat in lotus position atop the platform, wreathed in swirls of incense smoke.

Though some questions might be answered by the Fragrance of Memory— such as why Song Mingzhen’s personality had been so strange, if it turned out he really was Mo Yuan— even more questions would follow. How had this happened? Why did no one know? What was to be done about it?

Now, Ning Feiyun understood how his companion had felt during the investigation, as all of this began to come to light around him. It was overwhelming enough for Ning Feiyun— how much more confusing must it be when one’s memories had vanished, and when he himself was the subject of the questions?

Would Song Mingzhen, or Mo Yuan, even find enough answers today to satisfy him?

Even Yang Anxiang hadn’t seemed sure about that.

Speaking of Yang Anxiang… Ning Feiyun paused in his pacing, turning to glance toward the young woman who stood near the incense burner, carefully watching both the rising curls of smoke and the man who sat in meditation upon the platform. The Fragrance of Memory wasn’t a simple technique to prepare and perform— and sometimes, things went wrong. If the memories drawn up were too painful, too difficult to bear, it was possible for the one undergoing the process to destabilize— in that case, Yang Anxiang would need to draw him out of the memory before too much damage was done.

For now, though Song Mingzhen seemed to be stable enough.

If he truly did have Mo Yuan’s memories, though…

Ning Feiyun bit his lip and turned to Yang Anxiang. He’d never gotten to know her very well while she was Qin Wenying’s concubine. She’d mostly stayed hidden away in the palace, and his opinion of her had been no different than anyone else: a young, pretty flower that the late clan leader had taken a liking to and hidden away like a jewel in a vault. Though he knew of the rumors of her involvement with the Nameless, no one had thought too much of that— pretty though she might be, in terms of cultivation she had seemed rather unremarkable. Even if there was any substance to the rumors, it wouldn’t make much of a difference.

How wrong they’d all been…

Now that they were here, though, waiting for Song Mingzhen to finish recovering his lost memories, Ning Feiyun couldn’t help but grow curious.

“Yang-xiaoniang,” he said, then paused. “Yang-guniang, are you the one who assassinated Qin-zongzhu?”

Yang Anxiang’s brows rose a little and she glanced up at him. She tilted her head slightly, then turned back to the incense burner before her. “Why would you ask such a thing,” she replied, “and what makes you think I would answer you honestly either way? You’re one of the Qin clan’s lackeys, after all.”

Ning Feiyun clenched his jaw, glancing at Song Mingzhen— but the other man didn’t stir in the slightest, deep within the incense smoke’s trance.

She was right— he’d been foolish to think she would actually answer his questions.

“You enlisted my old mentor, didn’t you? Ning Zhifeng… he wasn’t the sort of person who would perpetrate such an attack,” he continued to press, “Even the stories he told about aiding the cause of the Nameless didn’t properly connect— why would someone who gathered herbs and provided medicine and safe housing for fugitives turn instead to attacking the heart of the cultivation world’s stronghold— and at a disadvantage, no less?”

Yang Anxiang didn’t even look up at him this time— she seemed rather committed to keeping her lips sealed. But then again, that wasn’t particularly surprising, especially if she’d been playing such a long game here, ever since the end of the war.

“Do you truly wish to revive the Nameless?” Ning Feiyun finally asked, realizing that he wouldn’t get anything out of her about the attacks. At least not until Song Mingzhen woke from his meditation.

“Hm,” Yang Anxiang snorted, then tipped her head slightly. “What do you think?”

“I don’t think you do,” Ning Fieyun replied, shaking his head. “If that were the case, why attack so boldly while your forces were still so weak?”

“Who knows?” Yang Anxiang shrugged her shoulders.

Ning Feiyun clenched his fist more tightly around his weapon. This woman… she was refusing to give him a single straight answer. He exhaled sharply through his nose, then returned to pacing back and forth across the floor.

“You know, we’re not inside your fortress of despair,” Yang Anxiang said, idly twirling a curl of smoke around her fingers. “You can try to interrogate me as much as you’d like— but it won’t work here. Ning-san-gongzi, you’re in my domain right now, understand?”

Once more, Ning Feiyun paused, and then narrowed his eyes. “What will you do with me, then? Even if… what we suspect is true, and Song-gongzi is actually your ally… I’ve never been aligned with the Nameless. Do you plan on eliminating me?”

Yang Anxiang was quiet for a moment, then released a faint, slightly sad chuckle.

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“Oh, I considered it— but I think it’ll be alright to let you go. If Yinmeng Xuelian remembers who he is and wishes to return to his former position, of course, it will be his decision rather than mine. But in the case where I am the one to decide your fate”— she shrugged her shoulders— “I think I’ll let you go. After all, my business here in Yinshan is done, so I won’t have any need to stay around this place. By the time you can send your hunting hounds after me, I’ll already be long gone.”

Ning Feiyun pressed his lips tightly together. He wanted to ask her where, but knew that she wouldn’t answer. To press an interrogation might end in a fight, and though Ning Feiyun was fairly sure that his own skills surpassed hers, Song Mingzhen was quite vulnerable right now. He couldn’t risk causing that person harm… not now, when so much still remained unanswered.

It was a little reassuring, at least, that Yang Anxiang didn’t mean to kill him, but he was still surprised that she was leaving. He wondered if it were a bluff, meant to mislead him, but decided that likely wasn’t the case. It wasn’t as though he could just let this slide, after all, and people would come within a few days to search this cave. If her “business” truly was finished, though, did that mean she would no longer menace Baidong Mountain’s people? And what exactly had she set out to do?

Kill Qin Wenying… lure Song Mingzhen in to uncover his lost memories… free Qiu Wei…

Ning Feiyun lifted his head now.

“The Second General of the Nameless,” he said as he stepped closer, the mask of the interrogator returning to envelop his features, “where is she?”

“Safe,” Yang Anxiang replied— and there was a sharp edge in her voice now.

“… what do you mean?” Ning Feiyun was a little surprised by that answer. “I wasn’t asking about her well-being.”

“Perhaps you should be.” Yang Anxiang looked up again. A prickle of anger crossed her brow, her eyes flashing dangerously. “Wei-jiejie has already had her cultivation destroyed, and been imprisoned for five years within that terrible fortress of yours. She has suffered so much— weren’t the two of you friends once? Do you really have no sympathy toward her whatsoever?”

“She invaded Baidong Mountain,” Ning Feiyun replied, but the words came out a little hoarse.

“So what if she did?” Yang Anxiang snapped. “It was about time. Your cultivation clans hold too much power, they’ve trapped the rest of the world beneath their iron grip. It’s not as though their hands are spotless, are they?”

Ning Feiyun scowled at her, but couldn’t argue. The Nameless had raided, burned, and slaughtered their way through outposts and towns— but it was true that things happened within the mountain prison that were just as terrible, like what had happened to Mo Lan. Even so…

“I don’t believe that any atrocities should be pardoned,” he shook his head, “but Qiu Wei is a vicious person, who doesn’t care who gets caught up in her quest for power and destruction.”

“She was a vicious person,” Yang Anxiang corrected, her voice laced with bitterness. “That is, before your clans broke her. She’s paid for her crimes with both body and mind. You should just let us go— but even if you don’t, you’ll never be able to find her.”

“You can’t say for sure that she won’t seek out revenge,” Ning Feiyun countered, “just as you have on her behalf— this is why those like the Generals of the Nameless can’t be allowed to run loose!”

“And maybe if we were permitted to ally ourselves with your great clans, then we would have done so!” Yang Anxiang snapped back, “but no, instead rogue cultivators are hunted, confined, butchered, their very existence a crime… just because they didn’t have the fortune to be born into a good family.”

“What of yourself? Yang-guniang, you were born into one of the great clans, so what do you have to worry about the fate of nameless criminals? You would never lack opportunities.”

“Why? Should I not care about the common people? The great clans wield unlimited power over those beneath, and they cannot even hope to rise up through their own skill and effort,” Yang Anxiang shook her head. “Besides my own fate, there are the fates of others— and to see so many cut short simply for desiring to nourish the talent the heavens endowed them with…”

She sighed, shaking her head and rubbing her fingers against her temples.

“Yinmeng Xuelian, Wei-jiejie… they were all fighting a war in which they could not hope to prevail. Nonetheless… I wanted them to succeed,” she continued, and her hands clenched into fists. “I was so young then, but I had already been studying cultivation for my entire life and had a great deal of knowledge about medicine— so I decided I would join their side.”

She went on to explain that she had originally intended only to heal, to support, to prevent as many people from dying as she could— but as the war went on, it became more and more difficult to avoid the actual fighting. It was at some point then that she began to study illusion-crafting, forging for herself a new cultivation path that unified this new interest with her former studies in medicine. No wonder her illusions were particularly potent, if she was not relying on willpower alone, but also on more concrete, practical methods. And no wonder she was able to easily make use of the Fragrance of Memory— she’d probably used it as a basis for her own techniques.

Ning Feiyun might have been impressed, if he weren’t already so wary.

Yang Anxiang left out quite a lot of details in her story— only stating that at some point after the attack on Baidong Mountain, Qiu Wei had taken an interest in her and her skills, and they had spent quite a lot of time traveling and fighting alongside one another, growing close.

The way she spoke of Qiu Wei was with a marked, deep tenderness. Now that Ning Feiyun could hear the affection in her voice… it was no wonder why she’d gone through all the trouble of breaking into the mountain prison to set her free.

“Jiejie is hardly a shadow of her former self now,” Yang Anxiang finished, “It would simply be cruel to return her to that prison, just as it was cruel to keep her there in the first place. I will not allow you to recapture her. She is harmless— and even if she weren’t, it would make no difference. Now… all we hope to do is disappear and live in peace, away from the cruel eyes and hands and blades of the cultivation world.”

It was the closest so far that Yang Anxiang had come to making a plea.

Ning Feiyun was reminded of that day Mo Yuan had approached him in the forest. How he’d pleaded— and though at the time Ning Feiyun hadn’t known the details of the circumstance, and though Mo Yuan’s desperation had been more apparent than Yang Anxiang’s was now, he couldn’t help but feel like the two situations were similar. Each one of them, pleading for him to turn a blind eye, for him to let them save someone they cared for who had been imprisoned deep beneath the mountains… even the cells they had been confined in had been just across from one another.

Last time, Ning Feiyun had yielded, and Baidong Mountain had been viciously attacked as a result.

This time… if he were to let Yang Anxiang go without a fight, would something terrible happen again? Or would the two of them truly go off, secluding themselves away from the world and causing no more harm?

It was impossible to know for sure.

Ning Feiyun took a shaky breath. Right now, for all her threats and posturing, Yang Anxiang looked tired. His heart told him to agree to let them go, but his mind still couldn’t release its worries. He couldn’t trust her.

Before he could give an answer, though, the candlelight in the chamber began to flicker, and upon the stone platform, Song Mingzhen’s head suddenly snapped up. His eyes opened— rolled back into his head, all white as blood began to drip from his seven facial apertures.

“Yang-guniang!” Ning Feiyun shouted, rushing forward to Song Mingzhen’s side. “Something is wrong!”

Yang Anxiang, too, snapped into action, cutting open her palm and dripping her blood onto the incense burner’s surface, crimson soaking into the metal.

“Try to stabilize his spiritual flow!” she ordered. “The weight of the memory is too much for his mind to bear. I’ll draw him out of the trance!”

Even as she spoke, though, the room began to shake. The candlelight turned from soft amber to crimson, the flames turning red as blood. Ning Feiyun reached to press his hand against Song Mingzhen’s chest, channeling his own spiritual power into the other’s meridians.

But something was wrong. Very wrong.

As Ning Feiyun tried his best to constrain the burgeoning flow within Song Mingzhen, to prevent the rampant, untethered spiritual qi from damaging his body and mind, he felt a sharp, volatile power rising up from within the other man’s dantian. Even as he attempted to ground and stabilize, Song Mingzhen’s own spiritual power fought back against him, lashing out and severing the connection between them over and over again before it could fully take root. There was a faint glow from beneath Song Mingzhen’s clothing, a blood-red spiritual light emanating from his core and two small slivers on his shoulder and side.

Ning Feiyun grit his teeth and tried to push through, to suppress the backlash, but then a hand caught the back of his robe, pulling him away from Song Mingzhen and down to the floor with a strength that was a little surprising.

“Watch out!” Yang Anxiang cried out— and a moment later, a pair of shining, crimson blades, shaped like the petals of a lotus flower, were launched from Song Mingzhen’s body. They sliced through the air and scored against the walls of the cave before returning to hover around him, creating an impenetrable, threatening wall.

Ning Feiyun lifted his head from the ground, but Yang Anxiang, who had pulled him down and pinned him there, pushed it down again just in time to evade another strike.

“I need to get to the incense burner— I can’t break him out of the trance without it,” Yang Anxiang hissed.

“You knew this could happen. How could you not take precautions?” Ning Feiyun scolded.

Yang Anxiang flinched, then slowly reached out across the floor to where the incense burner had fallen. The smoke had nearly stopped rising from it, yet Song Mingzhen— or Mo Yuan— didn’t seem any closer to escaping the trance. “I didn’t expect such a violent reaction!”

“Mo Yuan is a Jiedan-stage cultivator, and you and I are a major boundary below him,” Ning Feiyun replied, watching the Xuelian blades closely. “How could we hope to properly stabilize him?”

“He’s not conscious,” Yang Anxiang answered, as her fingertips caught the incense burner’s handle and pulled it toward her. If they raised any part of their bodies above the height of the platform, the blades would lash out toward them, but as long as they remained pressed close to the ground, it seemed they would be able to avoid the danger. “His vital weapon is only attacking us because the trance is unstable, and it is responding to a threat within the memory. Now, make sure to watch the blades while I try to wake him.”

She put out the embers in the incense burner, but before the smoke could fully dissipate and she could start to unravel the threads of the memory, those twin blades lashed out again— this time, though, they buried themselves in the floor.

Ning Feiyun felt a sudden rush to his head, and a sense of dread piercing his gut as the red light hovering at Song Mingzhen’s— at Mo Yuan’s core— flared brightly, unleashing a shockwave of spiritual qi that rippled out from the platform, across the floor.

“Yang-guniang! It’s collapsing!” he shouted, but it was too late to do anything about it.

The floor of the cave broke into countless pieces, plunging all three of them into the darkness below.

Ning Feiyun gasped as his body hit the surface of an ice-cold underground river. His head plunged beneath the water as he flailed in the pitch darkness for something to hold onto. The current tumbled him back and forth, left and right, until he couldn’t tell which way was up and which was down, and his lungs were aching as he tried in vain to reach the wall, or the shore, or anything solid. He had no idea where Yang Anxiang or Song Mingzhen were, the sudden shock of the fall and the cold having impaired even his spiritual sense.

The water was deep, and flowing rapidly. Once, his head breached the surface and he tried to gasp in a breath, but it came too late and he ended with a mouthful of water. It seemed the only thing he could do was try to hold on until the river reached its end, or became less rough, or he found the shore… he shut his eyes tightly, holding his breath until he began to feel lightheaded, then held it some more.

Just before his consciousness faded away, he felt a hand grasp hold of his sleeve, pulling him through the water. He opened his eyes again, trying to see in his hazy, half-conscious state who had rescued him, but it was still too dark to see anything.

As he felt rough pebbles and sand beneath his palms, his head spun and his body gave out, and he collapsed limp and exhausted on a small, rocky shore.